Work Overview

This piece derives its title and the movement titles from Kenneth
Slessor's (1901-1971) poem, 'Five Bells' (1939).

The entire poem occurs in the time-lapse memory "between five
bells", that is the fragments of memory, reminiscence, nostalgia
and atmospheric memento mori triggered by the sound of
five nautical ship's bells tolling out the time. This composition
is a study of time, death and the harbour (Sydney Harbour).

The narrator remembers the bobbing buoys and reflected lights
coruscating on the nocturnal harbour, the sounds and images
evoked by Sydney Harbour. He also describes the "diamond quills
and mackerel-backs" of the glittering dancing waves. This image
evokes the lively, fluid, ephemeral, translucent, brilliant and
oblivious (to death) continuum of nature and the harbour, the
constantly oscillating effervescent waves that is encapsulated in
the elegant, filigree, flowing first movement.

The second movement conveys the rhythmic, meticulous, almost
paranoid, precise yet idiosyncratic metronome of time that the
drowned, lackadaisical subject of the poem refused to be
entrapped and constrained by, juxtaposing the ethereal quality of
memory, a warped time that transcends clocks, momentum, humdrum
and decorum. The dancing piano counterpointing the mechanistic
clockwork motifs and occasional lurching melodies of the bass
clarinet seek to elude temporal shackles. One perceives the
character's sardonic, skeptical condescension towards conventions
of temporal organisation.

The third movement is a dark, sinister, intense and evocative
ferocious fervour that is juxtaposed with wild and other-worldly
cries and the distress of the drowning sinking man the poet
imagines, switching over from the disarray and panic of the human
experience into the "longer dream" and timeless, otherworldly
fluidity of the sea as the narrator relives his drowning below
its dark surface and permanent disconnection. It evokes a
violent, turbulent struggle, floating off into the sublime
eventually, concluding with the tolling of the five bells,
closing the glimpse of the memory.

Death and the harbour featured significantly in my life at the
end of 2009 when I was composing this piece.

Special thanks to Ros Dunlop and Charisma Ensemble for
courageously undertaking to perform this piece before it was
written and for the opportunity to write for three of my
favourite instruments.